I've been looking through my copy Drinax's Aslan character generation system and it happens to strike me as a basic character generation system like that which was found in the first LBB's. and since I'm waiting for my copies of the new main books I was wondering if there are going to be advanced character generation rules in them like the LBB High Guard, Mercenary, Scouts,and Merchants? And if so would I be right in assuming that the advance Aslan character generation system would be in the Aslan alien book?

Which Traveller LBBs do you have? The ones for GDW? Or the ones for Mongoose? The green-titled LBBs from Mongoose contained advanced chargen rules. The Mongoose Alien Module books do not. Their career templates mask over the Mongoose corebook chargen rules.

The new Drinax book chargen rules should look similar to the Mongoose 2nd Edition chargen rules. As far as I know, there won't be any advanced chargen rules published for 2nd edition Traveller. I don't think 2nd Edition High Guard has any. Other things have been given priority for this current edition of Traveller.

Point-buy will be like it was in 1st Edition probably. The advanced chargen rules though, were a huge difference in chargen.

I only know 2e material. Are there sources anywhere which explain this advanced chargen approach?

Not that I know off. Maybe there was a sample career to download (a preview almost) from 1st Edition High Guard, back when the book was first announced. In general though, the specializations for each career had specializations. And they used huge D66 event charts instead of 2D6 event charts.

Last edited by ShawnDriscoll on Fri Aug 11, 2017 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The 1st edition of Traveller i.e. the Little Black Books had a expanded character creation tables in the later core books. These included going to college and yearly assignments. They told you what kind of duty you did each year of your four year term but you also had to make a survival check for each year. your character could also be sent to military training school like Gunnery and special forces school. Most players would use these once they came out because you could get more skills with a little luck but because of the yearly survival checks most characters tended to be shorter termed a lot fewer retirees.

I tried a point system when I was trying Traveller Hero and it just didn't feel right with no term rolls. I ended up having my players roll up their characters the normal way than convert them to hero Traveller that work much better.

Basically the advance character Gen Only covered the main careers Navy, Army, Scouts, Merchants Those were the only ones that the LBB 1st edition covered. MegaTraveller Added Air-force with Coacc Book. In many Ways for character Gen and Race Books Mongoose could get a lot from the way Megatraveller did the Race Books and Coacc they were very well done. I still think Mongoose could do them better but I would hope they would give those books a good look over.

1st they broke the major races down and paired them up. Second they made each human branch different and interesting with their own characteristics also they did advance and regular character gen in the books. Pulse the races were paired one human one alien except for the last planed one which was going to be Hiver & Ken'Kre. Lots of social and historical backgrounds for each race. I just felt that they did a real good job of making the races interesting and real.

I like that the Mongoose Alien books kept to just one race in each one they produced. They added to what was already printed in earlier editions of Alien books. Some Aliens got a revamp/reboot, because license reasons maybe. I like a few of the illustrated styles that have been used for Aslan from various editions. I like Gareth's writing style that set the design look for all Mongoose's Alien books to come after. I like backstory when generating a character. Mongoose excelled at doing that with its races. The Darrains book was my least favorite. Pages and pages of very dry writing in it. Made the race seem boring. I was hoping they'd be more like John Byrne's Man of Steel Krptonians, with all the Thor majick tech from Marvel Studios' films. But nope.

I like that the Mongoose Alien books kept to just one race in each one they produced. They added to what was already printed in earlier editions of Alien books. Some Aliens got a revamp/reboot, because license reasons maybe. I like a few of the illustrated styles that have been used for Aslan from various editions. I like Gareth's writing style that set the design look for all Mongoose's Alien books to come after. I like backstory when generating a character. Mongoose excelled at doing that with its races. The Darrains book was my least favorite. Pages and pages of very dry writing in it. Made the race seem boring. I was hoping they'd be more like John Byrne's Man of Steel Krptonians, with all the Thor majick tech from Marvel Studios' films. But nope.

Darrains are weird even the maps say tech 16 they are actually tech 14/15 having lost most of their higher tech to the solar flare that they caused in their own system. their Navy ships hulls are tech 16 but the systems inside are 14/15 that tends to be confusing to many people.

The Mongoose alien books ran about 150 pages about the races than had a sector or something to fill the rest the Megatraveller books ran about the same but combined 2 races to get a similar page count.

Darrains are weird even the maps say tech 16 they are actually tech 14/15 having lost most of their higher tech to the solar flare that they caused in their own system. their Navy ships hulls are tech 16 but the systems inside are 14/15 that tends to be confusing to many people.

That was part of the mystery. Legend of a TL 16 subsector kind of deal. Travellers go to explore things. Find out what things there are really up to eventually. Hand-me-down ideas from the GDW texts.

The Mongoose alien books ran about 150 pages about the races than had a sector or something to fill the rest the Megatraveller books ran about the same but combined 2 races to get a similar page count.

Ya. MegaTraveller used concise text. This happened. That than happened. Kind of how Classic Traveller did their write-ups. The '90s changed all that with how books should be written and how layout was done. TNE was doing stuff in their books that GURPS books still haven't tried doing. Serenity is written in the same style/layout as TNE. And so are the Mongoose 1e Alien books. As well as some of the later Space: 1889 books that have come out in recent years.

I still found the Megatraveller alien book far more useful and engaging than the first editions. I remember one of my groups had to do something but they had to get help from the Vilani section of a city and none of them paid ant attention to the different and that just cause them all sort of trouble.

I'm a big fan of the DGP alien books as well. Easily digestible with enough detail to work with and sweet-looking art.

Anecdotal note: The Solomani and Aslan book had a great-looking deck plan for the Eakhau-class trader which Mongoose oddly disregarded. Mongoose's Eakhau is blocky while DGP's is smooth and streamlined.

"Spacers lead a sedentary life. They live at home, and their home is always with them—their starship, and so is their country—the depths of space."